Always Been a Storm

In early June 1994, my family and I packed our belongings and drove across the country from Fort Lewis, Washington (just outside of Tacoma, on the outskirts of the Seattle metro area) to New Windsor, NY (an hour upstate of NYC, just west of the Hudson River).  This was not a move that anyone in my family wanted.  My parents had built a house in Washington, and my dad received orders to move to West Point roughly 10 days before we were supposed to move into our new home.  They were devastated, of course.  I remember being mildly disappointed, but generally accepting of this fact of life.  I was an Army child who had attended 5 different schools in 5 consecutive years from kindergarten through 4th grade.  Moving was as natural as the tides. But the trauma of that move would manifest in ways I did not understand until much later.

In my mind, it stormed that entire summer. I had lived in the Pacific Northwest for 4 years, and there were no thunderstorms there. But I remembered them from my early childhood, and I was terrified of them. I was 12 now and I knew I was too old to have such fears. I don’t think I had ever watched The Weather Channel in my life, but suddenly I was watching it obsessively, convinced that it was only a matter of time before a storm would spawn a tornado that would rip through our home.

1994 was also the Major League Baseball lockout. Consequently, there was nothing to watch on television that summer. I remember cycling endlessly between MTV, VH1, and The Weather Channel, with intermittent breaks to play NBA Jam. And in the midst of this summer malaise, there are several songs that I remember playing in heavy rotation that summer. Each of them walked the tightrope of adult contemporary and alternative rock that was sure to get airtime on both MTV and VH1. I joke that you could be watching one of these 3 songs on MTV and then flip to VH1 and the same song would be playing concurrently. I believe that this really happened to me on numerous occasions, but I might be willing it into existence.

The first of these songs is All I Wanna Do by Sheryl Crow, and that’s the one I’ll focus most upon here. I must start by establishing that I love this song. The entire Tuesday Night Music Club album is a favorite of mine, but All I Wanna Do in particular occupies a prominent place in the musical pantheon deep in the recesses of my mind. First, the “Hit it” intro seems totally unnecessary, as does the following explanation that this is neither a disco (despite a disco guitar riff being played in the background) nor a country club – two things that do not seem to be related in any way, aside from being places (I realize the disco line is a Talking Heads reference, but nonetheless). This cold open is non-sequitur in an amusing way that usually only 90s rap music achieves.

The lyrics to All I Wanna Do are largely borrowed from the poem “Fun” by Wyn Cooper. However, the song takes the lyrics in a very different direction, mostly through its selective omissions and its addition of the upbeat chorus (which sounds disingenuous next to the rest of the song). The song feels like a spiritual successor to Piano Man, except told from the point of view of the patrons. That guitar/bass lick that repeats throughout just feels subversive and I can feel the pit in my stomach when it plays.

There are so many things about All I Wanna Do that delight me: the bizarre way that she enunciates “until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard,” the way she sings “daaaaangerously close to one another” in this sort of disinterested play-by-play, that keyboard underneath that sounds like Got to Give It Up by Marvin Gaye.

I hate the third pre-chorus (“Otherwise the bar is ours…”). You have that great musical interlude after the second chorus that fills me with dread, and then some throwaway section that sounds like it was written on a cocktail napkin. In the Cooper poem, this stanza is much more sinister. Crow even makes a halfhearted attempt at resolution with “the SUN and the MOON” at the end. It is Sheryl backing off from this depressing abyss about drunks in a bar at noon, day-drinking their problems away and longing for whatever “fun” actually is. She dances around a compelling point and then hedges. It is relatable. I do it all the time, as someone who generally regrets 50% of what I say.

My final thought on All I Wanna Do – I like to think that it’s part of a trilogy with Leaving Las Vegas and Can’t Cry Anymore. I don’t know what order the songs would go, or even that they tell a larger narrative. I just picture the same protagonist for each.

The second song that makes me think of that summer is Round Here by Counting Crows.  There is so much to unpack from that song, and I’m sure it is well trodden by writers far more talented than me. And I’m less interested in a literal interpretation of this song than I am of All I Wanna Do. Round Here is more about a feeling. That feeling begins immediately with that slightly distorted guitar and lasts through “ah man I said I’m under the guuuUUUUuun.”  And it is not lost on me that the bridge actually contains imagery of escaping the lightning dream.  I had heard Mr. Jones back in Washington, and had loved the song, but I just somehow knew that Round Here was more in line with who the band actually was. And I’m not sure if it would have resonated with me the same if I were still nestled in the idyllic cocoon of the Puget Sound. But I had moved somewhere harsh by comparison. The best one could hope for was that no one would notice the contrast of white on white.

The final song that reminds me of that summer is Wild Night by John Cougar Mellancamp featuring Meshell Ndegeocello. Originally a Van Morrison tune, I actually prefer this cover despite my affection for VM. Ndegeocello’s bassline is thrilling. Similar to All I Wanna Do, Wild Night is ostensibly a song about having fun with something unnerving under the surface. And it too has weather imagery (“inside the jukebox roars just like thunder”). I cannot put my finger on what I find unsettling about this song but I can feel the barometric pressure dropping when the chorus hits. Mellencamp and Ndegeocello don’t even harmonize on most of it – they belt the same notes, as if shouting over the rising winds. 

I began to grow up fast in New York, and continued to do so thereafter. Music moved on and the returns have been diminishing until I eventually ceased to care about anything new. I would feel visceral feelings about other songs in the future, but not like these.

And so it went in that summer that lasted forever (as all summers did back then). Inevitably, the song ends and I would seek the comfort of the smooth jazz of the Weather Channel (probably The Rippingtons, whom I love). The 50% chance of afternoon thunderstorms from the Local on the 8’s report 20 minutes ago has dropped to 40% and I allow myself to feel a sliver of relief. But out the window, the clouds look suspicious. I flip back to one of the two music channels owned by the same media conglomerate. Hit it.